The Beginning of the End
by Masquerading as Quality
Summary: Emma accidentally interrupts her parents meeting in the Enchanted Forest and must correct her mistake; in the meantime, she sees another side of everyone's favourite queen-turned-mayor. A Swan Queen redirection of the Season 3 Finale, Snow Drifts/There's No Place Like Home, with smut, because why not?


**A/N:** A small part of this has been sitting around for two years. The rest I wrote in two days. The basic idea of this is to take the concept of the season 3 finale (y'know, back when there was some semblance of reason)—i.e. Emma and Hook get sucked into Zelena's time portal—and take it in a direction that doesn't make me seethe with rage. Sound fun? Good.

 **Disclaimer:** Swan Queen-centric and anti-Hook, though honestly not nearly as much as I thought it would be. This isn't super innovative—a lot of this closely follows the actual show, with some skips and altered dialogue because the show's dialogue is clunky and lacks curse words. But it makes me feel better and hopefully it will do the same for you. The M is for some smut at the end.

* * *

"It's Regina," Emma breathed.

"Not Regina, love. The Evil Queen."

Emma fully intended to snap at him. _I'm nobody's love_. But this was quickly drowned out by a rush of white noise as the Evil Queen turned on her heel to face in their direction. Emma's breath hitched.

"She's even worse without the sensible pantsuits."

Untrue in every way. She was sort of magnificent, actually, and Emma was feeling strange. Tingly and vulnerable and out of place. She didn't like it. She needed to fight back against something—might as well be herself.

That weird, vulnerable feeling worsened as Regina continued her speech to the frightened villagers, most of whom Emma recognized as the future citizens of Storybrooke, Maine. Regina was straight-up unhinged, her eyes dead with the kind of rage people let fester in their hearts for too long. This was what Storybrooke saw when they looked at her. This was the past Regina contended with every day of her life.

As incentive for the villagers to give up Snow White's whereabouts, she unveiled some poor young woman who couldn't even be Emma's age, screaming in terror because Regina was going to kill her.

And Emma believed it.

She sprang into action. She didn't exactly have a game plan, but when did she ever? Emma Swan would not just stand by and let Regina murder some poor, innocent woman! But then—!

"What the hell?!" she snapped at Hook, who was holding her back.

"What are you doing?"

"What are YOU doing?!" Emma tugged her arm out of his grasp. "I'm gonna help that poor woman!"

"We can't mess with the past, Swan—who knows what could happen! Even small changes could—"

"Yeah, yeah, I saw the Butterfly Effect," Emma absolutely despised that she saw sense in his words.

"The what now?"

"Nevermind, I'm just...I'm just supposed to let her die?" Emma pressed.

"Whatever her fate," said Hook as the woman was led away in tears, "we can't interfere. Not if we want a chance at getting back to the world we know."

 _Awfully serene, watching some poor girl led off to her doom, aren't you, Mr. Pirate?_ But Emma bit back her retort in the interest of getting away from this place and these familiar faces as quickly as possible. "Let's just find Rumpel," she said coldly.

Once the queen and her men were safely out of earshot, Emma and Hook searched the area. They found some dresses hanging out on a clothesline and Hook suggested Emma steal one in order to blend in. Again, she found herself hating the sense in his words, especially when the corset was tight and the neckline was swooping. Not something Emma normally would have minded all that much, but Hook was an unapologetic leerer, and it would be very detrimental to their mission if she had to clock him.

It seemed like they didn't walk ten steps without running into more trouble. They ducked behind a bush and waited, and Emma steeled herself for the possibility of seeing Regina-but-not-quite again, but instead, she saw...

Snow White! The bandit version of Snow White. And really, she'd been trapped in time not long after this, but still, the difference between this Snow White and the Mary Margaret Emma knew and loved was astounding.

"We should get out of here."

"Wait just a second," said Emma. She had the feeling she was about to witness something incredible, and she was just so happy at the prospect of seeing something good unfolding after the horror they'd just witnessed not an hour ago that she couldn't bear to—

Things could unravel so quickly.

Emma snapped a twig. Snow fell from her tree. The royal carriage moved on. Emma felt a lump form in her throat.

"Fuck."

"Huh?"

"You know what you were saying about small changes?"

"Yeah?"

"How about..." Emma swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat only worsened "...big changes?"

"What do you mean?"

Emma couldn't deal with this right now. She couldn't think about it. She didn't want to talk about it. They had to find Rumpelstiltskin. Now they just had one more problem to deal with. "Nevermind. Let's keep moving."

* * *

In the end, they didn't find Rumpelstilktskin so much as Rumpel found them, and wasn't that just fucking perfect. And as much of an absolute shit as he was, he was bizarrely helpful. Once he accepted their premise, and that time travel had 'been done' as he said, he was perfectly willing to figure out some kind of portal of his own to get them back.

"There might be kind of a problem," Emma confessed.

"You changed something," Rumpel guessed. "What?"

"I may have...sort of...stopped my parents from meeting."

"What?!" this from Hook, who had been uncharacteristically well-behaved throughout their interaction with his arch-nemesis.

Actually, it all felt a little easy. Rumpel agreed to help them and not to kill Hook, and Hook's bravado didn't get them into any more trouble. Emma guessed she had the factor of utter astonishment on her side. Time travel was some serious magic, and Rumpel and Hook understood enough about serious magic not to fuck with it.

"Oh, Rumpelstiltskin, you're back! Do you need anything?"

"Belle!"

Confusion, a kind of glaze over her eyes. "I'm sorry...have we met?"

Emma was such an idiot—why had she said it? Of course Belle wouldn't recognize her! "No, I, uh, sorry...Rumpelstiltskin...mentioned you?"

"Did he?" she smiled, surprised. Poor Belle. At least life had started to turn around for some people in the future Emma knew.

"No. No, I didn't." Rumpel's eyes were wide and his manner more frenetic than it had been before. "Go and...read a book..or whatever it is you like to do. Come back and clean later."

"You could ask nicely," Belle quipped over her shoulder.

"I could also turn you into a toad!" Rumpel replied cheerfully.

Emma almost groaned. "Dear god, I am _sorry_ , can we please just get back to my parents?"

"Yes, yes. Who are they?"

"Snow White and Prince Charming."

"Prince...Charming?"

"James."

"King George's son?" Rumpel clarified, incredulous. "I've just arranged his marriage."

"But see, that's not supposed to happen, Snow was supposed to steal his ring and then he went looking for her, and then they—"

"Ah ah ah!" Rumpel waved her off. "I don't care! There's a ball tonight. Prince James will be there, and so will his ring."

"That's perfect! That's great, so we just need to get Snow there!"

"How are we supposed to do that?" Hook wondered.

"Allow me," said Rumpel. He walked over to some little crystal ball-looking thing, waved his hand, and there was Bandit Snow, talking to some sketchball that of course Hook recognized immediately.

"She's with Blackbeard."

"Of course she is," Emma sighed.

"My guess is she's trying to secure passage on one of his ships."

Something like panic started to take root in Emma's heart. What if Snow left? What if she and Charming never met? Would Emma just fade out of existence? Would she be trapped here for the rest of her life, with only this asshole pirate and a bunch of familiar faces who didn't recognize her for company?

"And it appears she is failing," Rumpel chimed in as Blackbeard stood and walked away from Snow.

"Oh!" Emma exclaimed. "The ring! She was going to get money for the ring to escape the queen!" _Regina_ , her mind offered unhelpfully. "We can still stop her, then. Can you help us?" she asked Rumpel.

"I can work on your time travel problem, I can get you an invitation to the royal ball, but this—" he gestured to the image of Bandit Snow in the crystal ball "—is your mess. You know what you did. You clean it up."

Rumpel left them standing there like idiots, but in keeping with unhelpful people being bizarrely helpful today, Hook had another idea. "If she's seeking passage on a ship, I know a captain who could help us."

* * *

"We're actually going to _go_ to a fucking ball?" She'd remembered Rumpel mentioning it, but she hadn't processed the idea that they would have to _attend_.

This was so unbelievably stupid. Stupid Emma just had to go around fucking up the past, she'd just had to fucking seduce past-Hook to 'keep him occupied' ('come back with me for a night cap, or shall I find someone else'—these words would haunt Emma for as long as she lived, fucking creep), and now she had to somehow figure out a way to get her parents to meet at a ball? She didn't know anything about balls or royals or Fairytale World or anything!

"Not like that, you're not!" Shiny Rumpel replied cheerily, and suddenly Emma's stolen peasant garb was a huge red ballgown.

Emma swallowed uncomfortably. "But...we're not supposed to stand out?" she protested feebly.

Rumpel waved his hands at them and showed them a mirror. "A simple glamour spell does the trick every time," Rumpel said. Emma never thought she would miss creepy Mr. Gold, but compared to this dude, he was a charmer.

Emma had pretty dresses, sure, but she wasn't usually a pretty dress kind of person. They were impractical and uncomfortable, they made men leer at her (which had already been happening the whole time they were stuck in this fairytale nightmare), and they also had a nasty tendency to make her feel like no one was taking her seriously. She complained all the way to the giant, golden palace, up to the point when they were announced to the court and allowed into the royal ballroom.

In Emma's brief acquaintance with her parents as complete individuals in full possession of their memories, Emma had heard more about balls and parties and royal gatherings than she could have ever imagined. She'd sometimes wondered whether their lives were just a series of social engagements, one after the other, without pause. Had other people Emma knew been to a lot of these things? Had Ruby, or Belle, or Ashley, or Regina?

"What's the big deal about these things?" she grumbled, half to Hook and half to herself.

But then—!

A small crowd of people engaged in chatter parted, and Emma set eyes on a glorious array of dancing couples, whirling in perfect synchronization to the music she'd hardly even noticed before now, and Emma held her breath. She felt a tiny flicker of something like joy starting up in her heart, and slowly, hesitantly, her reservations began to melt away.

"You were saying?"

Maybe, just for one night, in this slice of time that barely even existed, _shouldn't_ have existed—maybe this could be fun.

"What are we supposed to do?" she wondered, still feeling distinctly rattled. But her mind had been opened to the possibility of a positive experience, and so when Hook offered to lead her in whatever elegant choreography she was witnessing, she swallowed her protest. Anyway, when was the last time anyone had asked her to dance?

"You know how to do this thing?"

"What, waltz?"

Hook was oddly in his element here, and that only served to make Emma feel more out of sync, but again, she swallowed her reservations and did her best to enjoy the dance. She got the hang of it after a few minutes, and then she really started to enjoy herself.

She was having such a bizarrely good time that when she caught sight of David—Prince James, here—with his betrothed, she didn't completely lose her shit. She did, however, keep an eye on him as she continued to waltz.

Everyone of any importance in Emma's life was a part of this world. Henry, too, might as well be, for how obsessively he'd read that book of his. Emma had always felt like an outsider, no matter where she went, but it was particularly heartbreaking to finally find the people she'd secretly longed for her whole life—her parents—and feel out of place with them, too.

Emma had wanted to leave Storybrooke, to go back to New York, because she felt like she had some kind of life there. Well, she didn't exactly, but Henry did. He had school and friends and hobbies, and he hadn't really seemed to have any of those things when Emma had first arrived in Storybrooke. Much as Regina had come to show how deeply she cared for him, the town was still trapped in a curse, and Henry was not. Henry had grown and changed while his surroundings had not.

And Emma? Well, her surroundings had changed, over and over again, while she'd stayed more or less the same.

Maybe, if she did succeed, Emma could now share a little piece of this world with the people in Storybrooke. Maybe she could start seeing these people as a more complete version of who they were, and maybe that would help them to see Emma in the same way. Maybe she didn't have to keep running.

"What's your problem? I'm getting better," Emma said to Hook, who was smirking at her.

"I'm just thinking about what you said in Storybrooke, about not being a princess."

"Really?" Emma raised her eyebrows, but she wasn't in a fighting mood. The dancing was making her sort of heady. "You get my first dance at my first ball, and all you can say is 'I told you so?'"

"I'm merely suggesting, your Highness," said Hook with a little bow of his head, "that you are a natural."

And hey, she kind of didn't hate him for a second there. He wasn't saying it because he had a good shot of her boobs, or because he had anything to gain from it. He wasn't drunk or aggravated or just generally being an ass. For that one shining second, Hook had just said something to be nice.

Again, Emma was amazed by how quickly everything could unravel.

Charming disappeared, and before Emma could get eyes on him again, the front doors burst open and every head in the ballroom turned to look at Regina. Emma's jaw dropped and she went weak in the knees. She looked like the picture in Henry's book, kind of, but also like something out of a particularly disturbed wet dream, and Emma was in no way prepared for her mixed reaction to this.

"Regina," she breathed.

"Calm down, Swan. She's a guest—Midas's head would disappear into another realm if she weren't invited."

"Heh. Yeah. You're right." But Emma still had a hard time calming her racing heartbeat.

And indeed, King Midas greeted her cordially and announced her presence, and the ball continued as before. Regina stalked around the room like some kind of wild animal hunting its prey. As she walked, people subconsciously shifted away from her, and upon further inspection, Emma could see her guards slinking off into the corners of the room.

Regina wasn't just here as a guest—she was here looking for Snow White.

It was sort of crazy to think of Regina Mills, once-mayor of a tiny town in Maine who had any number of matters to attend to and zero patience for anyone's bullshit, as a person so obsessed with something that she didn't seem to do anything but search. Emma wasn't clear on the particulars of their long history of issues. All she'd really gathered was that Snow had been a lot more at fault than anyone seemed to want to believe, and that among other things had helped to drive Regina off the deep end in her search for justice.

As the song ended, Emma excused herself and went to stand on the sides for a bit. Mercifully Hook didn't follow her right away—she needed to be alone for a minute.

Regina was here looking for Snow, and if Hook had done his job right, Snow was going to be here to steal Charming's ring. That complicated things. Regina always complicated things. If they hadn't had much of a game plan before, they really didn't have one now.

Regina stalked past Emma, and like an idiot, Emma just had to open her stupid face, because she felt so bad even for unhinged Regina just walking around the ball with no one to talk to. Had she ever been able to enjoy a ball like Emma was trying to do? "G-good evening...your Majesty."

Regina turned on her, all cold, dead eyes and sneering face, but before she could even begin to say something back, someone started screaming, and the room descended into chaos.

"Snow White, Snow White! Snow White is here!"

The queen was off like a shot, Emma's odd outburst of friendliness completely forgotten, and Emma darted through a random corridor, with Hook on her heels. They reached a balcony just in time to see Snow escaping and Charming calling after her, and Emma was sure everything was back on track until—!

A guard knocked her aside and aimed an arrow at Snow. Emma freaked out and tacked the guard. His arrow missed, and suddenly Emma realized the mistake she had made: she had aided Snow White. And she had seen earlier what happened to people who helped Snow.

What was worse, Charming's ring lay on the ground where Emma had fallen.

Hook was busy engaging the guards Emma had just antagonized. "Snow dropped the ring—I have to go!" she called to Hook as she assessed her options. She couldn't scale the wall—her best option was to camouflage herself in the chaos downstairs.

"I've got this!" Hook responded, and surprisingly enough, she believed him.

But Emma didn't get two steps into the remains of the royal ball before another one of Regina's guards spotted her.

"There she is!"

Emma was surrounded almost instantly. She turned in frantic circles, looking for the tiniest hint of an escape route, but found none. She turned once more and came face to face with—

"Going somewhere?"

Regina had looked at her a lot of ways. There'd been that strange, pained spark behind her eyes when they'd first met, that confusion turned to cool, calculated defensiveness. Emma had hated her, sure, or at least she would have said she did if anyone had asked, but of course it had never been that simple.

After Emma had broken her curse, the way Regina looked at her changed dramatically, but Emma couldn't really put her finger on it. It was still pained, somehow, but somehow far less guarded. They had formed an odd sort of friendship in a very brief period of time.

And then, when Emma had returned from the Enchanted Forest, had felt so incredibly out of place, so utterly un-missed—and why should she have been, really?—Regina had looked at her like a friend. She'd welcomed her home, and she'd come to that awkward party because Emma had invited her, and suddenly every time Regina looked at Emma, this awful, nervous churning sensation had started up in Emma's stomach, and no matter how often she'd tried to tell herself it was _absolutely impossible, never gonna happen, get a hold of yourself, Swan_ , the feeling had never entirely died down.

At least...until Regina had started hanging around Robin Hood, of all people, and looking like a fucking ray of sunshine all of a sudden—except of course when she looked at Emma, and there was that strained sadness behind her eyes again, and Emma felt like absolute shit, because how could she wish for something so impossible when Regina wasn't even happy to be looking at her?

As if that weren't bad enough, now, in this moment, Queen Regina looked at Emma and saw absolutely nothing. A stranger. Just some other person, one more enemy in an neverending sea of enemies. Emma swore she could actually feel her heart breaking.

"Regina, please, I didn't—"

"That's a bit informal, wouldn't you say?" But it wasn't the same burning, complicated rage of the Regina Emma knew. It was deadened, thoughtless. It was second nature. "Show some respect."

Guards grabbed Emma's arms and she fought them instinctively, but Emma felt like she was falling apart inside. Everything was just going so incredibly wrong, and Regina was looking at her like she was nothing, and she felt like nothing, and what the hell was she supposed to do if the Evil Queen had her beheaded or whatever?

"Oh no, dear, you're not going anywhere," said Regina, still with that odd, flat anger. "Snow White may have left the party early..." she chuckled cruelly, and chills ran down Emma's spine "...but I suspect your night is just beginning."

* * *

And who the actual fuck should be in the adjacent cell but that poor young woman Regina was tormenting earlier? She was condemned to death because she knew where Snow was hiding, and she didn't tell Regina.

And god, Emma was just such a mess thinking about all these weird feelings she was having about past Regina and seeing her past-parents and wondering if she would ever even exist if she failed and would that even matter if she was nothing to them? She hardly even thought about escaping for who knew how long. She was too busy wallowing in self-doubt and staring at that stupid ring and thinking, well, hey, maybe it would be better if she just kind of faded out of existence.

"Being away from family is a terrible thing," the other prisoner was saying.

"Yeah," Emma said. She thought of Mary Margaret and her weird way of being Emma's mother, and she thought of herself and her weird way of being Henry's mother, even when she'd had a lifetime of fake happy memories helping her, and she suddenly felt like she might cry.

"It only gets worse the longer I'm away," the woman continued. "I guess because I know I'll never see them again."

A very large part of Emma wanted to tell the mystery prisoner to shut the fuck up, because she was absolutely not going to fucking cry in a medieval jail cell, lost in the space-time continuum, but she squelched that urge and tried to say something helpful, instead. "If my mom were here, she'd tell me to have hope," said Emma dully, for she had never felt more hopeless in her entire life. "Maybe you should, too. Who knows, maybe you will end up with them again."

"I'm sure they already think I'm dead," said the woman. Emma was unsurprised that her feeble attempt at a Hope Speech hadn't gone very well. "Soon that'll be true."

But then something on the disgusting floor caught Emma's eye, and almost without her consent, her brain offered up a memory. Thinking of Neal was a little bit like getting punched in the gut, and she was slow to process her thoughts, slow to overlook her weird emotional distress and think about the possibility of escaping, but for some reason there was a little bit of metal wire on the spoons, and Emma knew how to pick modern locks—why not medieval fairytale ones?

"Go, get out of here!" the mystery woman was saying to her, and Emma knew she wasn't supposed to save her, but this woman had helped her bandit mother, and Emma was just trying to help her bandit mother and not stop existing forever, and how was she supposed to just let someone die?

* * *

Things got pretty fucked up after they escaped. A part of Emma sort of blamed herself, because maybe saving someone who was supposed to die had actually fucked everything up, and she should have just listened to goddamn Hook, of all people.

But he and Charming and Ruby had broken into Regina's castle to save her, and together they'd watched as Snow White, Emma's slightly estranged mother who was technically younger than she was, was burnt at the stake. And just when Emma had thought she couldn't handle losing one more person, no matter how strange her presence in Emma's life might be, it turned out that Snow had turned herself into a bug or something.

And then the fucking Blue Fairy Nun showed up and turned Snow back into a human, and Emma was just so incredibly happy to see Snow alive and well that she hugged her, completely forgetting that Snow White the Bandit had no idea who she was.

And then Emma nearly had a complete breakdown in front of what might as well be total strangers because her mother looked at her just like the cursed Mary Margaret once had—like she was just another person.

Emma watched Snow reunite with Ruby, who was her best friend here, and it was like Storybrooke all over again: fairytale people reuniting with other fairytale people with whom they had a history, and Emma standing on the sidelines saying 'yeah, sure, just happy I could help.'

Hook tried to make Emma feel like shit about saving mystery woman, and Emma remembered why she spent most of her time being 300% done with him.

"What if she has a child who grows up to be a mass murderer, or she...runs into one of the seven dwarves or something?"

"That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard."

"She doesn't belong here, Swan."

Emma barely resisted clocking him. "Fine, so we'll take her with us."

Unsurprisingly, mystery woman didn't go for it, so Emma knocked her out, which was maybe not the best idea she'd ever had, but she was feeling particularly irritated that Hook was making sense again, and whatever, maybe mystery woman's family was in Storybrooke and they could reunite there.

Against all odds, Snow and Charming found each other again, and their story made it back onto the track Emma (and anyone who would listen) knew.

"They're walking away from each other."

"No, that's okay," Emma told Hook, feeling weird and vulnerable, but so much happier than she had dared to be this whole time. "That's how it happened the first time. It took them awhile to accept their feelings."

"Must run in the family."

Emma ignored him, but there was no telling what feelings she would have to contend with if they survived this crazy adventure.

Emma and Hook, with mystery woman slung over his shoulder, returned to Rumpelstiltskin, and got themselves poofed into some scary-ass vault of dark magic. Emma was suddenly forced to contend with the fact that she had once had magic, but it had been taken away, but it should be back, but it wasn't.

And fucking Hook just had to keep prying until she was reduced to a crying mess, because the way Belle and Snow and Ruby and Regina had looked at her, like she was just some person, had been the way Emma had treated them since the beginning.

And admitting that she didn't really want to go back to New York, that she really, really wanted Storybrooke to be her home, with all its flaws and its crazy magic bullshit and its strange people who had histories the likes of which Emma could only barely imagine, had brought just a tiny spark of Emma's magic back to her, and that was apparently quite enough to reopen a portal to the future from whence they had come.

* * *

Emma raced to Granny's Diner, where everyone always seemed to be. The first person she set eyes on was Belle, sitting at the bar. She would have been alone except that across from her, leaning over the bar and talking not a breath away from Belle, was Ruby, who looked happier than Emma had ever seen her. Emma nearly lost her shit, and she had to cover her mouth to stifle a sort of sob of happiness, but she didn't disturb them.

Her parents weren't hard to spot—people sort of congregated around them. They'd been well-loved rulers, for all their many flaws. They looked up from their as-yet-unnamed baby to see Emma half-crying, standing an awkward distance away from them and a little unsure of what to do.

"Emma!" said Mary Margaret. And in her eyes, Emma saw _everything_. Recognition, love, hesitancy.

And Emma completely lost it. She half-stumbled forward and hugged both of her parents, and she was sure she was catching them a little off-guard, but nothing could be worse than bandit Snow and her blank expression, and they were her parents, and she had actually done what she'd always dreamed of doing—she'd found them.

"You weren't answering your cell," said David. "We were worried."

"I'm fine," Emma couldn't let go quite yet, but she did back away enough to continue the conversation. "I'm...I'm home."

"Home?" Mary Margaret echoed, still hesitant. "You mean...are you staying?"

Henry popped up out of the booth next to them, and Emma wrapped one arm around him, but she still kept her other hand on Snow's arm—she couldn't let go. "We're staying in Storybrooke?"

His delight at the notion made the decision clear, if nothing else had. They had family here. And what kind of person would Emma be if she deprived Henry of his family, when she'd led a life so devoid of it?

"We're not going anywhere, kid," she assured him.

She looked into David's eyes, then into Mary Margaret's, and for the first time allowed herself to bask in the love that shone in their eyes. It was a little uncomfortable, and very uncertain, but Emma wanted so desperately to be able to accept it. "Mom," she said. "Dad."

Their faces lit up, and Emma hugged them again.

A little while later, mystery woman came wandering in, and Emma waved her over. She didn't know where the fuck Hook had wandered off to, but she'd worry about that when she was done catching up with her parents.

Not two seconds into drinking the hot chocolate Ruby had prescribed, mystery woman nearly choked, said, "It's the Evil Queen!" and looked increasingly like she was about to start running around screaming like a crazy person.

"Shh! No, it's okay!" Emma tried to calm her hurriedly, before she incited a riot (or worse, Regina heard her). "She's...she's different here. Look, I'll just..." Emma's hand lingered in a 'stay there' position as she made her way towards Regina, because the mystery woman still looked like she was ready to start screaming like crazy.

"Regina."

Regina turned her head, and Emma almost lost track of her thoughts. Regina regarded Emma with that strange, complicated _something_ Emma hadn't even known to miss until she'd seen only coldness in the Queen's eyes. She looked troubled, yes, but on her lips, there was the faintest hint of a smile, and more than anything, there was _recognition_.

"Hi." _She doesn't know you've been gone_. "You..." _look beautiful_. Damnit, Swan, focus! "There's...something you should know."

Silence.

"I brought someone back...from the past."

Eyebrows raised, gears turning. Suddenly Emma realized how incredibly poorly this could go. Maybe Regina was a different person now, but she was still a little...prickly, to put it lightly.

"Look, it's...she still thinks of you as..."

"Evil." No hesitation. It was sort of heartbreaking, really, because, sure, the person Emma had seen had been completely off the rails, but people had thought of her that way even without seeing that side of her, even when she was really trying to be a good person. And god, Regina could do so much good when she set her mind to it.

"I'm gonna bring her over, I mean, I already told her, you know, that it's okay, but it's just kind of delicate, and—" Emma knew she was talking a mile a minute, but she couldn't quite get the words to stop "—and I know if she met you, I mean, I feel like she would just—"

Mercifully, Regina cut her off, but now her smile was all business, a la Madame Mayor. "I understand," she said, and put on her best slightly fake smile, and Emma retrieved Marian, and—

And goddamnit, was it just so unbelievable how quickly things could unravel!

"Regina, I'd like you to meet—"

"Marian?"

What the fuck was Robin Hood even doing here? Emma hadn't seen him before; she'd thought Regina was alone for once, or she'd have had to go through a whole mental process of preparing herself for that weird added interaction before she even approached Regina to begin with, and wait a goddamn second, what did he just say?

"Marian..."

"Robin?"

Horror and a kind of helplessness crossed Regina's face.

"I thought you were dead!"

Robin Hood and Maid fucking Marian embraced passionately in the middle of Granny's Diner, and Emma's eyes barely left Regina.

And then! The icing on the fucking cake! "Mama?" That cute little kid wandered over out of nowhere—what was his name? Rupert? Robin Junior?

"Roland!"

And suddenly Regina's eyes were on Emma again, and they were filled with the kind of betrayal Emma hadn't seen since she was fighting with Regina over Henry. "You did this?"

"I—she—she would have died!" Emma scrambled, but under Regina's burning gaze, her perfectly valid argument felt strangely hollow. "I just wanted to save her life!"

Regina straight-up sneered at her, and suddenly it was like looking at the Evil Queen all over again: terrifying, magnificently horrible, and strangely tragic. "Just like your mother," she said coldly. "Never thinking about the consequences."

"I didn't know!"

But Regina was gone. She stormed out of the diner like a force of nature, and no one else even seemed to notice. Ruby and David and Mary Margaret and even Granny Lucas were all wrapped up in the beautiful reunion of Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

"Fuck me," Emma muttered, and rushed out of Granny's Diner.

"Where you going, Swan?" And of course, there was fucking Hook, always in her way. Sure, he had been surprisingly helpful, and maybe even a little nice on their journey, but that didn't mean she forgave him for being such an asshat sleaze the rest of the time.

"I have to go talk to Regina."

"She looked pretty angry. Perhaps you'd better let her cool down."

And sure, logically, Hook's words made sense, but Emma knew Regina. Regina didn't cool down. She stewed. Her anger did not lessen without further attention. It boiled over and slaughtered entire villages.

"That's not how she works."

"Swan?" More of a demand than a question, and Emma stopped begrudgingly.

Goddamnit, Hook, this is not the time or the place for your bullshit! "Listen. Thank you. For everything. You really had my back today, and I mean, you're the reason I even found my way back here in the first place. So thank you. But I have to—"

"That's it?" Hook cut her off.

"That's not...it, it's just I really need to—"

"I traded my ship for you!" He was looking sort of...unbalanced, and Emma started to get this queasy, weird feeling in her stomach.

"You what?"

"I traded my ship for a magic bean! So I could come and find you!"

Emma felt sick. Like, really sick. She'd really, genuinely thought that they were getting along. He'd been nice to her, he'd taught her to dance, he'd actually fucking taken care of shit and helped to get them back here. But it was all just more of the same old bullshit, wasn't it?

Emma clenched her fists at her sides to distract herself from the tears welling up in her eyes all over again. "People aren't the same as things, Hook," she said.

"Swan! Swan, wait! Emma!"

But Emma broke into a full-out sprint. She wasn't sure exactly where Regina had run off to, but Emma, personally, wanted to be somewhere out of the way, and the little park by the school seemed as good a place as any.

She sort of half-hid herself behind a tree, leaned back, and sighed heavily. A twig snapped, and Emma saw none other than Regina, pacing slowly back and forth in front of a bench that overlooked the playground.

Emma was such a fucking idiot, trying to take off when Regina had just gotten her son back. Regina had loved Henry before Emma had even really figured out what love was. She'd loved him so much that she'd let him go, thinking she'd never see him again. She'd loved him so much that she'd given both him and Emma a lifetime's worth of happy memories to cherish in her absence.

Emma couldn't remember exactly when she'd started wanting to be in Regina's life so desperately. Everything had always been so crazy in this weird little town that even the progression of time seemed pretty fucked up in Emma's mind. She remembered the way Regina had looked the first time Emma had laid eyes on her, and how that initial, terrifying attraction had so quickly turned into this weird, awful rivalry, because Emma hadn't really understood Regina, and yet she hated how much she did. If Emma had had anything worth protecting, she'd have thrown her whole mind, body, and soul into it, too.

And maybe Regina understood Emma a little bit, too, because sometimes their eyes met and even though they stumbled over their words, or said things they didn't exactly mean, or didn't say things they should have said, it was like they were on the same page of their own personal story. It wasn't the infamous book of fairytales, but another, newer and more private, and infinitely more complicated.

Regina wasn't the villain of that story, and Emma wasn't the hero. If Emma had learned anything over the past few years, it was that Regina had never been the true evil everyone pictured her. Sure, she was pretty horrendously awful sometimes, but seeing the Evil Queen in all her glory had sort of kicked everything else into place. The Evil QUeen was not a personality trait, it was a reaction. It was a reaction not only to Cora and Snow and Rumpelstiltskin and who-knew-who else, but to the countless people who chose to view Regina's pain as some sort of inherent evil, who continued to see her that way even when she did good things—great, heroic things.

If Regina had her way, who was to say exactly who she would be?

"Regina."

She'd stopped pacing. She stood over the bench, white knuckles clutching the top board. "Haven't you done enough damage for one day?"

"Please, I'm sorry!" said Emma, though she didn't dare get too close. "Would you really rather have been responsible for his wife's death?"

"I was responsible for a lot of deaths, Emma," Regina snapped. "What's one more?"

"You don't mean that."

"You think you know me?" Regina turned on her, rage etched into her face and burning in her eyes.

But at least it wasn't nothing.

Regina's fury ebbed, and her shoulders sank. Suddenly Emma was reminded of how small she was. Sometimes in those smart suits and high heels and with the way she carried herself, it was easy to forget, but now, more than anything else, Regina looked small.

"I should have known I couldn't have even this small, stupid happiness," she sighed. "Are you done tormenting me? Go celebrate with your guyliner boyfriend, why don't you. Leave me in peace."

The word boyfriend twisted Emma's stomach. "He's not my boyfriend."

"Thank god," said Regina. "You might want to tell him that."

"He's not all that good at taking no for an answer."

"If I had my way, he'd have died centuries ago."

"How can you say that?"

"He sucks, but he doesn't deserve to die."

"Many people would disagree with you."

"I..." And Emma had meant to protest, really she had, but she was just so exhausted, she didn't have the fight left in her to take on the full force of Regina right now. Moreover, she didn't really want to. She didn't come here to fight with Regina, she came here to...what, exactly?

"Seeing you as the infamous Evil Queen was...something else," she said, almost lightly.

Regina's lip curled and she turned away. "Hm."

Emma wanted to say even a fraction of what she'd thought...that Regina had been as magnificent as she was terrifying, as charming as she was cruel. She wanted to put so many things into words, but all that came out was, "You were..."

Regina folded her arms and waited, but when Emma failed to continue, Regina turned burning eyes on her once more. "What? I was what?" she demanded.

She was still hovering on the edge of abject fury, it was true, but mixed in with that rage was a tiny spark of near-desperation that Emma hadn't noticed before. As certainly as she knew she couldn't possibly have noticed it before this moment, she knew that now there was no way to unsee it. Regina had looked at Emma with desperation in her eyes for some time now.

"Well," Emma hedged. "You had a great wardrobe."

Regina frowned. There was a flicker of something new in her eyes, followed by a deeper frown. Regina turned away again, and Emma realized what she'd already known—she had to say more.

"It's hard to describe. It was you, but it wasn't. I don't know. When you..."

Emma's throat suddenly tightened. God, what was with all the waterworks today? Feelings were terrible. She wished she could just go back to bottling them up.

"When you looked at me...I mean, now, when you look at me, I'm not sure exactly what you see. Maybe we're friends, maybe I'm just some bitch who showed up and ruined your life, but..." Emma almost choked on her words, and a treacherous tear made its way down her cheek before she could wipe it away. "But at least I'm something to you," she said.

Regina turned around, stunned.

"You're not...I mean...we are," said Regina cautiously. "Friends."

Emma hurriedly wiped away her tears. "Yeah?" She felt a tiny flicker of hope starting up in her chest. Maybe she hadn't completely ruined everything today.

"You're right. You were saving a life, and I..." Regina averted her eyes, wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. "It wasn't anything like Snow. I shouldn't have said that."

Emma took a hesitant step closer, reached out her hand, and lightly touched Regina's arm. Regina eyed her hand skeptically, but she didn't pull away. Emma was stricken by how much she had missed Regina—her Regina, who was so different from Queen Regina in so many ways, and yet who retained so many of those regal and terrifying qualities.

"Do you wanna...I dunno, get a drink?" Emma asked, feeling strangely hopeful. "The entire town is packed into Granny's, so the bar should be deserted."

Regina's brow furrowed, but then she smiled. It wasn't the fake, political smile she'd put on just moments before Emma's decision had screwed her over, but a real smile. Hesitant, tragic, but real. She nodded.

Sure enough, there were 4 people total in Storybrooke's only bar, the Rabbit Hole, and one of them was the bartender. Emma and Regina clinked their glasses together and toasted nothing and everything all at once, and Emma told Regina about her adventure through the past with Hook.

"You made out with him again?" Regina almost gagged on her drink. "He hasn't changed clothes since I met him."

"Yeah, I know," said Emma. "And get this—as I was leaving the diner, it was like he was trying to guilt me into liking him because he, like...traded his ship to get back to me, or something."

Regina put down her drink. "That's disgusting."

Emma took a large swig of hers. "Yeah."

"I never really understood the attraction to begin with, honestly," said Regina.

Emma put her head in her hands. "God, I don't know. I'm into assholes, I guess." _I'm crazy about you, for example_. "Why are you into Forest Breath?"

Emma looked up just in time to see Regina fail horribly at hiding a smirk. "He was nice to me. I like his kid. It was almost like..." she frowned, took a drink.

"Like having a family again?" Emma guessed.

Regina didn't respond.

"I'm sorry I fucked it up," said Emma quietly.

Regina sighed. "You shouldn't be. I'm sorry I took it so badly. It was just...the first time anyone who was interested in me had been so kind to me since...god, since Daniel, and I did what I always do." She clawed at the air. "I latched on with the intensity of a thousand suns."

Emma laughed, and she found that smiling hurt a little bit. It had been a long day. "I get it. A lot more of it than I thought I did, actually."

Regina looked at her, and there was a kind of softness about her that Emma almost never saw. It made her feel all tingly and vulnerable, but maybe not in such a bad way.

"Henry says you're going back to New York."

Emma ran her hand through her hair. "I, uh...sort of changed my mind," she said. "New York is great and everything, but...but the people Henry cares about..." she locked eyes with Regina and felt her heart pounding in her ears. She had to say it—had to. Now, this night, this moment where Regina was looking at her like this, might be her only chance. "The people I care about are here. Anyway, I sort of realized..." she averted her eyes. "Most of the good memories I have in New York were...were the ones you gave me."

Regina was silent for a moment. "I did my best for you," she said quietly.

Emma half-smiled. "You always do."

"But it's never enough."

"That's not true." Emma looked up. Regina's face was tense. She was trying not to cry. Again, Emma was overcome by this awkward hesitation, and again, she chose to look past it and just fucking take a leap. She slid off her bar stool and wrapped her arms around Regina. "That's not true at all, Regina."

Regina placed a hand on Emma's shoulder, and Emma was sure she was going to push her away. But Regina looked up into Emma's eyes, and the hand on her shoulder moved up to gently touch the side of Emma's face, and Emma's heart started pounding so loudly she was sure the bartender across the room could hear it.

"Emma, I..."

"Regina..."

Kissing Regina was sort of like seeing the past couple of years flash before her eyes. She saw her 28th birthday cupcake, she saw Henry at her door, she saw Mayor Mills and all these troubled fairytale characters who needed her help, and the curse being broken, and making magic with Regina, and Fairytale Land and Neverland and Regina at that stupid fucking welcome home party, and Regina giving her Henry and giving them a happy life together, and Regina when they came back, and Regina with Robin and how much Emma had hate, hate, hated it even though she knew she should be happy Regina was happy, Regina the Evil Queen in all her terrible splendour, and now...

They broke apart, both gasping for breath, still clinging to one another as though for dear life.

Regina looked slightly terrified, slightly conflicted, as ever, but also undeniably aroused, and that one relatively chaste kiss had opened a floodgate of repressed emotion and arousal in Emma. "Let's get out of here," she breathed, but she didn't move until Regina nodded her assent and stood.

They left money on the table for their drinks and they walked hurriedly in the direction of the mayor's house. They weren't exactly touching, but Emma was clutching at Regina's sleeve, and the minute the front door clicked closed, Regina found herself pinned against it.

Regina kissed feverishly and roughly—in a way, it was unlike anything Emma had ever experienced—and their jackets were quickly deposited on the floor of Regina's foyer. Emma all but dug her hands into Regina's sides as she pulled her body closer.

They pulled away in tandem, panting, and Regina gestured vaguely to the stairs. For all the bizarre, utterly unreal things Emma had experienced today, this was the one that made her feel like she must be in a dream. She gave Regina a hazy half-smile and had half a mind to stop this before some cruel facet of their reality jarred her awake.

But what was there to disturb them? Hook was throwing a little bitch-fit somewhere, Robin and Marian had each other to deal with, Henry was with David and Mary Margaret...

Emma kissed Regina again, once, twice, three times before she practically dragged her up the stairs. Regina led the way to her bedroom, the door clicked shut, and they began anew.

It occurred to Emma as she slid Regina's shirt—all perfect fit and silky-soft fabric—over her head that this might really, genuinely have been her only chance. She might have seen her window and gone for it, and this might be all she ever got.

She considered, as she dipped down to press kisses against Regina's sternum and the gentle rise of her breasts over her black bra, what staying in Storybrooke was actually going to be like.

What would Emma do here? Go back into law enforcement? She had enjoyed it, and no one else had really seemed suited to the job.

(Now Regina was tugging at her shirt.)

Would she find her own apartment? Were there vacancies? Could she afford a house here? Surely living expenses in Storybrooke were nothing compared to the big city.

Emma wrapped her arms around Regina's bare waist and pressed their bodies together. The sensation of skin against skin, already warm and flushed from their mutual arousal, sent her head spinning. She was reminded of waltzing.

"Did you ever go to a royal ball for fun?" Emma wondered between kisses, forehead still pressed against Regina's.

Regina made a sort of huff of frustration. "Not really."

Emma's hands dared to travel downward from Regina's waist, and she finally got a wonderful handful of the perfect ass she'd been not-so-secretly admiring for who knew how long. "Shame," she said. "I'm sure you would have stolen the show."

"Hardly." Regina's hazy half-smile faltered, and she turned her head slightly so that Emma only caught her cheek with her next kiss. _Goddamnit, Swan. Keep your mouth shut for once!_

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." damn it, damn it, damn it!

"No, it's..." Regina smiled half-heartedly, pulled away, and turned around. "I was just thinking of all the balls I attended as Leopold's wife, and... Well, maybe it was for the better that no one paid me any mind."

"Damn it, I just..." Emma ran a hand through her hair in lieu of smacking herself in the forehead. She approached Regina cautiously and wrapped arms around her waist gently, giving her ample time and freedom to pull away. Regina stayed, and Emma relaxed significatly. At least she hadn't entirely fucked it up. "I meant to say, you always...look so...unbelievably beautiful, and I never know what to say, and I'm sorry, I just meant to say that."

Regina's hands rested lightly on Emma's arms, and slowly, she turned around. She was smiling again, for real, but there were tears shining in her eyes. It was a melancholy smile, but Emma returned it ten times over.

They looked at one another for a long moment before Regina's smile faltered once again. "I'm afraid of what will happen after tonight," she confessed quietly.

Emma could think of a dozen questions to ask. What will happen with us? With Robin or Marian? With the town? "Life in Storybrooke is anything but predictable," she offered instead.

Regina looked at her, almost sternly, like she was contemplating something that lay within Emma's very essence, but then she smiled again. "Yes...yes, I suppose you're right."

Emma smiled back at her hopefully, and Regina kissed her—gently at first, but between the two of them, they quickly worked back up to their previous level of intensity. Regina's skirt went first, then her bra, and Emma took her sweet time savouring every inch of this newly-exposed flesh before she knelt and pulled at the matching black, lacy panties.

(There was a pang in Emma's stomach when she realized that these fancy undies weren't chosen for her, but she chose to ignore it. Fucking Forest Breath wouldn't have appreciated them, anyway.)

Regina was _wet_ , and Emma was beside herself. She ran her hands over the contours of Regina's muscular thighs, rested them on her slender hips, and pulled Regina so roughly toward her that Regina stumbled a little. Emma smiled smugly into her skin, and allowed herself a luxurious moment to breathe in her glorious scent before she took her first taste.

(She thought of Queen Regina sneering at her, demanding that she 'show some respect', and in response, dug her nails into Regina's perfect skin. God save the queen!)

It had been...god, maybe a decade since Emma had gotten to eat out a woman, and man, had she ever missed it! She really lost her shit when Regina's fingers threaded through her hair and her entire body started shaking. Emma sucked hard on Regina's clit until she almost doubled over and yanked Emma's head away from her, but she didn't take long to recover.

Suddenly, Emma found herself half-flying onto Regina's bed. Had Regina used fucking magic? Emma couldn't be sure—her head had been spinning for the entirety of this encounter. Regina's arms swooped underneath Emma's thighs and locked her in place before her tongue plunged between Emma's legs, and the sensation of penetration with the velvety texture of Regina's tongue made Emma cry out.

(Regina smiled, victorious.)

Emma didn't take two minutes to come. She'd already been so worked up, and hers was one of those fast, painful orgasms that left her sort of shocked and reeling. She beckoned to Regina to come and lay beside her, and took a few moments to run her fingertips over Regina's neck and shoulders and breasts and waist and hips before she returned attention between her legs. Gently she slipped a finger inside of Regina, and they both sighed.

Regina met Emma's eyes, and this definitely had to be Emma's favourite way Regina had ever looked at her. She was positively overcome with desire, and even more, with a kind of...hesitant trust that made Emma's heart flutter.

Emma crooked her finger, and Regina gasped. Her lips were too enticing to pass up, and as Emma started to move her hand in and out, she nipped Regina's lower lip before she kissed her again.

Emma had no idea how much time passed—it felt like it could have been seconds, a mere instant. But Regina's hand dug into Emma's waist and her body began to shake again. Emma kept her rhythm steady, steady, steady until Regina was practically whining against her lips.

Emma felt Regina contracting around her finger, felt Regina's fingernails dig into her sides, but nothing was quite as satisfying as Regina absolutely wailing as she came.

What was more, Regina wasted no time recovering. She pulled at Emma with a strength that belied her petite frame until Emma was lying on top of Regina, with Regina's face between her legs, one arm around one of Emma's thighs in that incredible vice grip. Emma happily took the opportunity to go down on Regina again—ignored that Regina was not so perfectly groomed for Emma's benefit, but someone else's—but with Regina's tongue came two fingers inside of Emma, thrusting _hard_.

(God, Regina was just as fierce in bed as Emma had always dreamed!)

They must have stayed like that for a long time. Occasionally, Emma was aware that it had been a long time, but neither of them seemed willing to stop or close to climax. It was an incredible feeling, having Regina's bare skin—that skin she'd seen so little of, but dreamed so much about—pressed up against her own, and to have permission to bury her face between Regina's legs for whatever time they had.

Eventually Regina adjusted her angle just so, and Emma felt her arousal building. She shifted so that she could thrust her tongue into Regina, the way Regina had done for her, and she received a few extra-rough thrusts of Regina's fingers in response. Vaguely, as Emma's world grew hazy and her body tingled all over, she wondered whether this was all they would ever have together.

She was half-crying when she came, but she'd been crying so goddamn much today that she barely had any tears left to spare, so it was just kind of a dry sob.

Emma and Regina didn't spoon. Regina ducked her head under Emma's chin, and they held onto one another for dear life until, sometime in the early morning, they both fell into a restless sleep.

Emma's dreams were bizarre and disturbing, and every time she woke, she held Regina tighter.

As the sun rose and Emma couldn't get back to sleep, she thought a lot about the past. She thought about the distant past that had led them both to this world, that had destined Emma hero and Regina villain. She thought of the sad, messy, mangled past that had led Emma to Storybrooke, to finding her son and the mother who came with him. She thought of the beautiful, happy past Regina had given to Emma and Henry as a goodbye gift.

She thought of the murky, uncertain present, and how many new challenges they would both have to face in just a few hours. Emma shifted so that she could kiss the top of Regina's head, then she closed her eyes and tried to relax.

No matter what the past had wrought, Emma swore she would do everything in her power to give them both a happier future.


End file.
